No plans to pension off Telstra payphones

THE SIGHT of Telstra payphones on city footpaths and in country towns will be a fixture for the next 20 years after a historical shift in the way payphones are funded in Australia.

For the first time the federal government is paying Telstra directly to maintain its payphones on a 20-year contract worth $40 million per year. Meanwhile, private payphones are rapidly disappearing.

Few Australians use payphones on a regular basis but everyone wants one nearby in an emergency. In 2010 there were about 35,000 payphones in Australia, according to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, down from 87,000 in 1993.

Of the remaining phones the department estimates 16,100 were non-Telstra payphones.

A spokesman for Telstra confirmed it had 18,074 payphones in December last year.

The owner of a private payphone business, who requested anonymity, believes the department overestimated the number of private phones.

He said there are only 5000 non-Telstra payphones left, and ''within two years there will be no more private phones'' because of high line rental and equipment costs.

The decision to pay Telstra directly helped sweeten last year's historical deal between the telco and the government.

Instead of Telstra being subsidised through an industry levy, it now has a commercial contract with a little-known government agency called the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency.

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